At some point in everyone's life you start to wonder about people that aren't around anymore. Whether they're old school friends or even relatives, it's sometimes difficult to know how to even start a successful search. You could spend hours or even days trying to find someone through former places of employment, previously attended schools or the military, but at each step you will have to make multiple phone calls, possibly submit detailed requests in writing, and deal with endless departments and red-tape.

There are many challenges in finding old acquaintances including the possibility that they might have gotten married and changed their name. This can make finding someone you haven't seen in awhile quite challenging. Before the internet became popular there were very few options that you could pursue. Searching for lost friends became a massive ordeal involving countless man-hours spent talking to people or an expensive endeavor when you were forced to hire a private investigator to do the search for you. These days though the search is fairly easily done by using the internet.

The first thing you will want to do is spend a moment thinking about the person you're trying to find. Consider any details you can recall about their personality, such as nicknames, favorite sayings, maybe even try to remember a middle initial or place of birth. If you know their date of birth this will also help on your search. Try to remember any particular aspects of their personality, likes, dislikes and/or quirks about the person.

Next you're going to want to open up whatever web browser your use and head on over to google.com. Try searching for their full name, nicknames and any variation of their name that they would go by back when you knew them. Also try adding the names of places they may have lived or worked along with their name as that sometimes will help narrow down the results.

Next step is to type in an old email address that they used to have without the domain name into the search engine. It is pretty typical for people to keep the same user accounts used for accessing email, even if they've switched providers/carriers. If you find several people with the same name, try clicking on the sites and see if anything looks familiar. Sometimes people carry their personality with them online, even if they try not to.

If you think that they're the type who'd have some sort of online profile at any of the popular social networking sites like Myspace or Facebook then you'd want to check out yoName (www.yoname.com), a free search engine that polls a good number of the popular sites for profiles that match whatever information you're able to provide about the missing person (whether email address, full name or otherwise). For individuals with common first and/or last names this may require a bit of time on your part to go through all of the results, but it's pretty well organized and will typically show any photos available along with the search terms to help aid you in navigating the results.

The Social Security Death Index is a database of all deaths reported to the Social Security Administration since 1962, when death records were finally entered into a computerized database. Keep in mind though that the absence of any specific death record does not necessarily mean the person is still alive. Most newspapers will also let you search their obituary sections online to see if your missing person may have shown up there.

If you think they may have joined any type of licensed or certified profession (like doctors, lawyers or accountants) you can try searching the records of local trade organizations. Most people have at least one hobby or special interest and this can be a big help on your search. For example, if the person you're looking for plays the banjo, search through the online listings for local bluegrass or country shows. This may lead to you finding the person's name, photo, the name of the band if he's in one and hopefully even a venue where he is scheduled to appear. Perhaps the person has always wanted to become a teacher or loves hockey, there are thousands of other possibilities.

If you still can't find any information on your missing person, I hate to suggest it but you may find yourself in need of Inmate Search (www.thempamperedprisoner.com). The site is pretty basic but it includes a list of contact information for each state system for finding inmates. It also has links to search through the listings of federal prisoners. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of options for searching all states at once so knowing the state in which they'd be most likely incarcerated helps speed up the process.

If all else fails there are numerous pay-services on the internet that will do the search for you. You can typically find these companies pretty easily on sites like Google. If you are going to pay a missing friend service to look for the person you want to find, be sure to read the fine print before submitting any credit card information. You want to be sure they are a legitimate company before giving anyone sensitive information.

Following these tips can help reunite you with lost friends and loved ones. It's amazing what (and in this case, who) you can find online these days.